University of Oklahoma student Keith Nutter will have some amazing stories to tell his peers when he finishes his Boeing Corp. internship.

Although he's been working on the business side at Boeing Oklahoma City this summer, he still has a fascination with aerospace. One part of the internship included a tour of the B-1 Lancer, one of the bombers that are maintained at Tinker Air Force Base under a Boeing contract.

"Walking up on a B-1 and seeing how big it is, and knowing that the work you're doing impacts stuff like that, that's not something a lot of people can say about their internship," Nutter said. "Even though I'm on the business side, knowing that the work that I do flows through and impacts huge defense contracts and the day-to-day lives of tons of people, it's really cool."

Boeing OKC has 128 interns this year. More than two dozen are high school students, including Brittany Shrader from the Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics.

Shrader said she still wants to decide between a career in engineering or law. While her high school taught physics and math, the lessons were more conceptual than application-based.

"I wanted to really get a chance to see what the day-to-day life of engineering would be," she said.

Boeing OKC Site Director Mikeal Clayton said the company's high school intern class has grown from three in its first year. And while college interns are expected to work on projects as if they were employees, high schoolers take on projects normally assigned to college students.

"When these folks talk about the kinds of things they're working on, it's remarkable," Clayton said. "When we develop a pipeline of people that can do the kinds of work we do, it's incredibly important for us. If they choose to go somewhere else but we've helped them to prepare for those careers, we've probably helped the country."

About 72% of Boeing's interns return to the company, he said. Another statistic Clayton is proud of is the size of Boeing OKC's intern population. While employees there make up just 2% of the company's total workforce, 7% of all Boeing interns worldwide are in Oklahoma City.

"There's an investment by Boeing in students in Oklahoma. There's an investment in the site in Oklahoma, and there's a future here in Oklahoma for Boeing," Clayton said.

Dale Denwalt has closely followed state policy and politics since his first internship as an Oklahoma Capitol reporter in 2006.
He graduated from Northeastern State University in his hometown of Tahlequah. Denwalt worked as a news reporter in...
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